Greg Berlanti To Direct The Flash?

Everwood and Eli Stone writer Greg Berlanti has been named as the front running contender to direct Warner Bros. long awaited The Flash movie. It seems they've been keen to hand him one of their heroes for a while now, as he was signed to direct Green Lantern for a while before Martin Campbell came along.

Actually, Berlanti's involvement in Green Lantern doesn't end there – he's one of the film's producers and co-wrote the screenplay with Michael Goldenberg. Hushed word from that production is proving very good indeed, and has likely done Berlanti a great deal of good in chasing the Flash gig. It's always nice to think a director has really earned a job.

I think that the first real surprise of the IESB story is that there's currently some forward motion on The Flash. It's looking like that the creation of DC Entertainment is having a pretty rapid effect on the status of WB's many comics adaptations, even this long-troubled tale. In the last few years, David Dobkin and Shawn Levy's worked on developing solo outings for the character, and Adam Brody was cast as Wally West's incarnation of the character in the scuppered JLA movie.

The current comics Flash is Barry Allen, if I'm not mistaken, with his grandson Bart Allen and Wally West have also taken up the mantle of the Scarlet Speedster in recent years. I'd guess that the film might take a similar approach to the Justice League TV show that features a version of Barry infused with Wally, at least in cherry picking bits and pieces of various character versions.

Berlanti's previous feature films were The Broken Hearts Club and this year's Life As We Know It. I've seen neither myself, but they seem to be fairly low-key comedies with good casts. On the surface, then, he's about as curious a pick as Matt Reeves was for Cloverfield.